Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps her Department plans to take to (a) increase prison capacity and (b) improve rehabilitation services for offenders.

On 22 October, the Lord Chancellor announced the further steps the Government will take to manage prison capacity including launching an independent review of sentencing to ensure that we are never again in a position where we have more prisoners than we have space in our prisons.

We are also committed to creating 14,000 additional prison places and will set out a ten-year prison capacity strategy later this year, ensuring we have a sustainable pipeline of prison places over the next decade to allow us to effectively drive down reoffending.

This Government will act to improve rehabilitation services for offenders by giving offenders leaving prison the tools to move away from crime. This will include improving prisoners access to purposeful activity such as education, delivering pre-release plans for all those leaving custody; and ensuring that ex-offenders leave prison with a job and the skills needed to lead law abiding lives.